His Room is Cold Now
by Amordaon
Summary: "The worst part is that I've started to forget. For minutes, hours at a time, I forget that you're gone." A stream-of-consciousness type of thing from John to Sherlock after the fall.


**Note: Apologies in advance for the non-linear storyline and the changing tenses. The memories are mostly in present tense, and the present usually in past tense but sometimes in present tense as well. Hopefully it's not too confusing.  
As always, not beta'd or britpicked. I am fully responsible for any mistakes (obviously!). **

* * *

I think the worst part is that it doesn't feel like you're gone.

One more day. Walk. Work. Talk. Eat. Sleep.

I don't think about you.

Work is the same; dull, boring, predictable. You would hate it. People are still injured, still get sick. I treat them, because that's what I do. That's my job. I fix people.

Well.

I moved out of 221B. But you know that, of course. Mrs. Hudson didn't want me to go, even offered me a special deal so that I could afford it on my own. That almost made it worse, somehow. It was too full of you for me to stay.

Friends protect people. That's what I told you, before I left, left you to climb to the rooftop alone. Friends protect people, but I didn't protect you. Didn't protect you from yourself.

They were the last words I said to you when I could still see your face, but I didn't stay to see your reaction.

Did I hurt you?

I wake up in the morning, half-asleep, and I half-dream that you are there beside me, warm, living. I reach out to touch you, and the sheets are warm but you are gone. You were never there, not in life. But you exist in my memory now, and memories are flexible.

I should have been there with you, on that roof. Not on the ground, a million miles away, too far away to stop you as you stepped into the air. If you'd given me more time. I should never have left you, would never have left you alone. I would have stayed with you for the rest of my life.

I sit alone in my tiny flat on the hard chair with the uneven leg and I stare at you. I have you memorized, your hair, your mouth, the thousand expressions of your face; your neck and the lines of your shoulders, your arms, your hands.

I would have spent hours, days examining those hands, naming every muscle and bone held under the skin, starting from the inside out, so fragile, delicate, and strong at the same time; tracing the bluish veins and the lines of your palms.

Your eyes, that changed color depending on the light; sometimes blue, sometimes an icy green, sometimes grey and unreadable, sometimes a mix of the three and sparkling with excitement. The thrill of a difficult case. Energy. Life.

And one time, the last time, they were flat, dead, empty, dead empty blue in a dead empty face, face streaked with blood, blood pooling on the pavement, drenching your curls so that they clung to the ground when they turned you over.

No.  
No.  
No.

That's not how I want to remember you.

I think of you sitting on the couch next to me, too exhausted to even correct the television. Your head slips down to rest on my shoulder and you fall asleep there, one leg tucked underneath you. My arm starts to fall asleep, but I don't move. The program we are watching ends and the next one begins, but I'm not watching the telly anymore; I'm mesmerized by your face, your eyelids, lips slightly parted, the tension gone from your brow, your curls forming a dark halo against your pale skin.

That's the memory I want to keep.

You don't remember it, when you wake, and I never mention it. But I want you to know, now that you can't hear me, that I would have kissed you then. I would have run my hands through your hair and sliced my fingers to ribbons on those cheekbones. But I was scared, and so I contented myself with looking, watching you breath, memorizing your sleeping face.

I thought there would be more time.

The worst part is that I've started to forget. For minutes, hours at a time, I forget that you're gone. The realization, when it comes, is just as painful each time, just as painful as the first time all over again. But the pain of realizing that you're gone is nowhere near how much it hurts to know that I've forgotten again.

I keep catching myself waiting for you to walk in the door.

I didn't mean it when I called you a machine. I think you knew that. But maybe there was more truth in it than I thought. You sent me away, and you called me back like a dog, just in time to watch you die. I've always known you were cruel. But I didn't think that you could be so cruel to me. We were friends, remember? I was your only friend.

No, that's right, you don't have friends. Because friends protect people, and I certainly didn't protect you.

Or maybe you just didn't know. Perhaps it didn't occur to you that it would affect me at all.

I hate you.

I hope you know that. I hate you for what you did. And I will hate you for the rest of my life until I die and join you again.

I look up, and I can see you standing at the window with your violin, eyes closed in concentration as you fill the room with music. I can still hear it, feel it in my chest, like your melody crawled inside me and reverberated up and down my spine.

I can recall you perfectly, but your voice eludes me every time.

It's killing me.

Why are you still here?

They always assumed we were a couple, you know. It bothered me at first. And then it didn't but I still acted like it did because I felt like it should still bother me. But they were right, in a way. We were more than friends, I think, more than what people mean when they talk about friendship. We lived together, ate together, laughed, fought, solved murders together. I offered my life to save yours and you ripped a bomb off of me so fast I was terrified you were going to set it off. You were the center of my whole world.

You never corrected them. Not once.

Another moment and we're walking down the street, our shoulders hunched against the wind. You're talking excitedly about a case, and I'm listening, amazed again by your brilliance. Genius. You look at me for a minute, checking if I'm following, making sure I'm keeping up with your rapid train of thought. Your face is pale from the cold and in that moment your eyes contain the galaxies.

Your wrist was still warm when I felt for your pulse.

You left too early. There was still time, still time for you, still time for us. And you made a choice and cut it off. You left so much potential unfulfilled and I hate you for that as well, because you made the choice for me before I even knew there was one.

And I'm the lucky one, supposedly, the living one. Not dead, by definition. Because death is a tragedy to be avoided as long as possible.

I carry you inside when you are drugged and not making sense and I tuck you into bed. I am there when you wake up and I am there if you need me.

_"Why would I need you?"_  
_"No reason at all."_

But my name was the first word out of your mouth.

I dream that I walk through the flat, our flat. It's empty and cold and covered in choking dust. The rooms seem so much bigger without the furniture, without your mess. I'm looking for something, and I wander from room to room, my footsteps raising puffs of dust from the floor.

I never find it.

Do you remember that night, the first night we spent examining a dead body and chasing a murderer through the streets? You fixed me. Hours with you did what months of therapy couldn't manage. I killed a man for you. I'd known you for a day and I killed a man in cold blood to save your life. To save you from yourself.

And now you've broken me again.

The truth is that I see you everywhere. On the street, on the Tube, in the market, out of the corner of my eye as I climb the stairs to my flat. You're everywhere, in everything, ghosting around corners, calling my name in the middle of the night and pulling me out of another nightmare. You're everywhere, and so you're nowhere. I can't trust you.

I still have nightmares, you know. But it's blood on the pavement now instead of on sand.

You didn't give me a chance to say goodbye.

She told me to say the things I never said to you. But I couldn't. Not there. Not with her listening and categorizing and writing notes in blue pen. She didn't understand. No one understands what we were.

Were.

So I went to your grave and said it there, to you, alone. But even then my words got choked and lost. Could you hear what I couldn't say?

_I love you, Sherlock._


End file.
